Pure inspiration

“Join us in welcoming Purity Ring to our Friday, 10/25 lineup at the ExploreAsheville.com Arena!” Mountain Oasis Electronic Music Summit organizers just posted on Facebook. The Canadian dream-pop duo (Megan James and Corin Roddick) replace Tricky on the festival’s Friday night lineup.

Purity Ring is also the final announcement in a string of band replacements. The new recruits include Adventure Club (Sunday, 6 p.m. at ExploreAsheville.com Arena), Amerigo Gazaway (Friday, 11 p.m. at Asheville Music Hall) and Cashmere Cat (Saturday, 9:15 p.m. at Asheville Music Hall).

In January of this year, Purity Ring performed a lush set at The Orange Peel, underscored by an ethereal light show: “The light setup involves interactive lamps of a sort on a table. These have touch sensors and are ‘played’ with a stick, sending a signal to the synthesizer that tells the lamp to pulse or glow. Then, behind the band, a forest of cocoons suspended from arched metal stems rises. These, too, glow at certain points — at the Orange Peel it was near the end of the set.

“The lights are part of what makes Purity Ring’s show a spectacle. But James and Roddick, even without visuals, craft a huge sound. Much of the effect comes from James’s vocal — her voice is pure, high and snowy-cool. At moments she seems to dissolve into the machine-produced smoke. If freezing fog had a soundtrack, this would be it.”

About Alli Marshall

Alli Marshall is the arts section editor at Mountain Xpress. She's lived in Asheville for more than 20 years and loves live music, visual art, fiction and friendly dogs. Alli is the winner of the 2016 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize and the author of the novel "How to Talk to Rockstars," published by Logosophia Books. Follow me @alli_marshall